I had the opportunity to do an interview with Dane Schmidt from the band, Jamestown Story- previously known as And Then I Turned Seven.

Check out his tunes!!

Myspace.com/jamestownstory

Youtube.com/thejamestownstory

Purevolume.com/jamestownstory

Hello! How are you, Dane?

i’m doing very well, thanks for asking!

To start off, can you briefly tell everyone who you are and what your role is in Jamestown Story?

i’m the singer and acoustic guitar player for the band. 

What can you tell us about Brandyn Anderson and his role in the band? brandyn is a brand new member just added as of this summer, though he’s been playing shows with me for the last nine months. i’m very glad to have him in the group, and he tickles the ivories. (plays piano)  

The original name of the band was And Then I Turned Seven, correct?

yessum  

You said one of the reasons for the name change was because And Then I Turned Seven sounded dumb. Do you feel like music listeners judge bands on their name?   

 absolutely. people judge bands on everything haha. but the biggest reason was at the time we had some labels interested in the band and they were all thrown off by the name, so we felt it would be a wise decision to change it to something simpler, something that people could easily remember. 

How did your role change from going from a full band to just being a solo artist? 

it didn’t change a whole ton, the difference was it was me doing everything and not splitting up jobs and stuff between members. i was always the primary writer, and played a lot of the instruments on the records so that side of things didn’t change too much. 

Do you prefer being a solo artist? What are the advantages and disadvantages you found of going solo?

yes i prefer doing the solo/duo thing to having a full band. with a full band you definitely have more energy live and it can definitely be a lot of fun, but for some reason i just prefer what we’re doing now to having the full band. it’s a lot simpler and it’s definitely made me a better musician, having to write more parts than i normally would if there was a full band involved. 

How has the music you produce now, differ from the original And Then I Turned Seven EP entitled A New Start? 

hahaha that’s an interesting cd to compare to. that CD was just something we put together for fun when ATITS added a full band and went in a pop/punk direction for a few months. needless to say it wasn’t the right fit and we went back to the acoustic thing, but it was fun at the time. the music now is a lot more laid back, mature, and can appeal to a broader audience.

You have a new album coming out in the fall. What can you tell us about it?
Is there anything that makes this new album stand out, compared to the rest? 

yes we do, and we’re very excited about it. what stands out about this record to me is the songwriting. it’s definitely improved throughout the last couple years and i definitely think these are some of the best songs i’ve/we’ve ever written. i’ve always been happy with the songs on previous JS cds and have felt they would be hard to top songwriting-wise, but after sitting down and listening to the stuff we have written for the new record and the new ideas coming along, those fears have been forgotten. the songs themselves, and the sound of the new record, isn’t anything too different from what we’ve done before, just because i’ve never been one to change the sound of the band completely for new records. i’ve always believed that if you are doing something people enjoy, why change it? you’ll definitely hear a bit more piano influence with brandyn joining the group, but when he joined we said we’re not looking to change the band into a piano band or anything like that, we put the piano in when it fits and if it’s not needed we don’t force it into the mix. along with that brandyn has contributed some new songs that are just fantastic. so i’m very excited for people to hear what we’re coming up with, cause i most certainly am. 

We’ve noticed that you cover a lot of other artists’ songs. What’s the reason behind this?

i mean we do and we don’t. over a period of seven years we’ve done about 8 covers, which isn’t a ton but it’s definitely a good amount. i love taking good songs and putting my own spin on them. it’s a lot of fun for me. the cover CD was basically a way for us to release some material before the summer cause we knew it would be awhile before new music came out, so we wanted to give people some stuff to listen to. though it’s funny cause i actually just did another cover song that we’ll be putting up soon to keep people listening and get them ready for some new JS material. 

Jamestown Story is playing in Japan in four days. Congrats! Is there a story about how this happened? 

thank you! we were invited by a man who has been a big JS supporter for a couple years and wanted to bring us out to play at a beach house his company was sponsoring. it was an amazing trip to say the least. a lot of good things came out of it so i’m excited to see what happens in the future.

Since you chose to stay unsigned, is everything going smoothly? Do you regret not having a label to back you up?

yessum. i’m very content to keep doing what we’re doing cause it’s been working and like i said before, if something’s working there’s no need to change it. i never regret not signing to a label (though we also never had the opportunity haha) and as of right now i still wouldn’t, unless it was a ridiculous deal, cause we’re able to live off of what we do and there’s no need to be giving a label money we make for things we can do ourselves. 　

What are your goals for the future?to get this record out sometime before 2011 and see where things go from there. i’m also in the process of forming a small, independent label to release JS music through, along with some bands i think have a lot of potential to do things, that just need help figuring out how to make things happen. labels now a days are so damn greedy and useless (for the most part) so we (my brother and a friend of mine) wanted to start something that was VERY artist friendly, that treats bands well and helps them get their music out there. obviously just starting out we don’t have the resources many labels have, but the things we can offer are definitely beneficial to certain bands and we’re excited to see what we can do with it in the future. 

Is there anything else we should know about the you or Brandyn? Is there anyone that deserves acknowledgement for emotional or financial support?　we’re both just laid back dudes who love playing music for a job, and are blessed with the opportunity to play music as a job right now. we work really hard to make it so that we’re able to keep doing this, and definitely hope that we’ll be able to keep doing it for a while. 

we’d like to thank our parents and families, my wife and brother, and all the people who have supported the band through the years. i don’t know if these supporters realize how much they have helped JS through the years and i just could not be more thankful for what they’ve done for us. absolutely. people judge bands on everything haha. but the biggest reason was at the time we had some labels interested in the band and they were all thrown off by the name, so we felt it would be a wise decision to change it to something simpler, something that people could easily remember.